After a number of residents urged the city to install mats on the barrier island’s beaches so that those with mobility issues can easily access Long Beach’s iconic shoreline, the city last week released a plan to do just that.
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Bob Kaible and his wife, Deborah Raimey, owned a yellow-clapboard rental bungalow on Michigan Street, behind their two-story Minnesota Avenue home, in Long Beach’s West End, when Hurricane Sandy struck on Oct. 29, 2012, submerging the narrow blocks surrounding the properties in six feet of saltwater.
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Kendall and Ciro Frulio and daughters Olivia and Emma were living in a quaint home on Franklin Street in East Rockaway, within the village limits but blocks from the Bay Park border, when Hurricane …
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Hurricane Sandy was our worst nightmare realized. This monster storm packed as much energy as two World War II era atomic bombs, causing massive destruction, the likes of which had not been seen since the Long Island Express of 1938, a now legendary Category III hurricane.
Trapped on an island jutting into the Atlantic Ocean, we were front and center when Sandy attacked with a vengeance. Thousands of homes were inundated with seawater and sewage. Hundreds were left uninhabitable.
Two and a half years later, we continue to rebuild our tattered shoreline. In this series we will look in the coming months at the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery’s ongoing effort to reconstruct worst-case homes, businesses and communities that Sandy ravaged on Oct. 29, 2012 — and the myriad issues that residents and officials face as they piece together our shredded infrastructure. At the same time, we will look at state and local officials’ efforts to reinforce Long Island in the hope that we might be able to withstand nature’s fury better when the next monster storm hits.
—Scott Brinton, senior editor
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After a meeting on March 11 with U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, and Bob Menendez and Cory Booker, of New Jersey, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate announced that the agency had agreed to reopen and review every flood insurance claim — approximately 144,000 — filed in New York and New Jersey by victims of Hurricane Sandy, and not limit corrective action to just the 2,200 claims that are now in litigation.
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